Datastore goes into inaccessible state in vCenter / ESXi Host post PDL (Permanent Device Loss)

Products

• VMware vSphere ESXi

Issue/Introduction

Symptoms:
Datastore(s) and Virtual Machines show inaccessible on vCenter and ESXi Host after recovery from PDL (Permanent Device Loss)
 Hosts unresponsive, VMs losing network intermittently

Environment

VMware vSphere ESXi 6.5
VMware vSphere ESXi 6.7
VMware vSphere ESXi 8.0
VMware vSphere ESXi 7.0.x

Cause

• After a PDL happens on a LUN/Volume, all the applications running on that volume need to be closed and reopened so that the LVM/Datastore metadata gets reconfigured for the Volume.
• In few scenarios where underneath device fails few IOs even after PDL is cleared, LVM metadata won't get updated and the volume becomes inaccessible.

Resolution

To fix this issue, please perform a storage rescan. For more details, see Performing a rescan of the storage on an ESXi host .

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/308546

https://knowledge.broadcom.com/external/article/318712

If the Rescan did not resolve the issue, Rebooting the Host will gain the access to the Datastore.

Additional Information

Permanent Device Loss (PDL) and All-Paths-Down (APD) in vSphere 6.x and 7.x